


en passant

by maypop



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 00:49:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6307219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maypop/pseuds/maypop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A handful of moments in the service of the Divine Victoria.</p>
            </blockquote>





	en passant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smithy_of_words](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithy_of_words/gifts).



"Leave us," Divine Victoria said, and Malika found herself half-risen, looking around for the "us" and getting a very sour look in return. "My _personal guard_ will, of course, remain, if it isn't _too_ much trouble?"

 

That was going to take getting used to. Malika settled back into her seat. The small audience room that abutted Vivienne's personal chambers emptied. Vivienne leaned back in her chair and sighed, and for the first time since that day at the spa (a hundred years ago, or maybe only three weeks) the giant, ridiculous hat came off. The wimple underneath came loose in a handful of pins and a small, relieved noise, and Malika could see where the weight of the hat had left faint indentations. Vivienne pressed long fingers into her temples, rubbing blood back into her skin. The shapeless Divine vestments hid the lines of her suddenly boneless lounging posture, but two years away from slaughtering demons in the hinterlands, Malika could still picture it anyway. Against logic, the empty room seemed to lose space.

 

Vivienne dropped her hands and rolled her shoulders around, and Malika was suddenly aware of how long she'd been looking without speaking when Vivienne's skewering gaze landed back on her.

 

"What is _that_?"

 

Vivienne sounded appalled, which wasn't new, and was staring at her empty sleeve, which was. Malika lifted her arm and let it smack down on the table between them, and made herself not react to the shooting pains this grandstanding bought her. The loose sleeve dragged across parchment with still-wet ink. Vivienne stared at her stump like it was a jar of bees.

 

"Cost of doing business," Malika said. Vivienne ignored her tone and, with a quill, lifted her tattered cuff.

 

"My dear, with who? The ambassador of the nugs? Have you been _chewing_ on this?"

 

The iron band that had begun to tighten across Malika's skull loosened. "Fashion," she said. "Of course that's your problem."

 

Vivienne sniffed. "Chantry policy may condemn _me_ to this turnip sack--"

 

"For now," Malika guessed, eyeing the silk brocade and cloth-of-gold in question.

 

"--For now," Vivienne admitted. She discarded the quill. "But if you're going to be standing next to me, I would prefer you didn't look as though you came here from the kennels."

 

"Does the Chantry have kennels?"

 

"I'm sure I don't know," Vivienne said. Without asking, she began to fold Malika's ragged sleeve back. "But I would establish some, purely to throw this coat in them."

 

"Well, we are at your--" The end of Malika's arm came into sight, and Vivienne made--nothing so gauche as a noise, or a facial expression. Nothing but the faintest tightening of her fingers in Malika's sleeve. A tiny thing, to ring inside Malika like a bell. Malika cleared her throat. "We are at your service."

 

"Sloppy," Vivienne murmured. She folded the sleeve back once more, twice, until clear, healthy skin was exposed, above the cauterization. "Unforgivably sloppy, as he always was."

 

"Buy us a drink first," Malika tried. Vivienne didn't laugh. The fist she didn't have wanted to clench. "You trying to say you would have done better?"

 

"A safe bet in all circumstances," Vivienne said. "How unfortunate _I_ would not betray you." She let go of her sleeve and slid one hand under Malika's upper arm, holding the stump still for her sight, while Malika tried to find two thoughts to rub together in a mind gone suddenly blank.

 

Vivienne had touched her before, healing her hurts after battle, and with the sky torn open Malika had heard pledges of loyalty enough she could have taken a stack into the privy with her. Nothing new was happening here.

 

Vivienne traced a finger of her free hand across Malika's skin above the raw flesh. Cold spread down from her touch, easing the ever-present throb.

 

"I will build you an arm of white gold," Vivienne said. "And with it we will tear out his heart."

 

*

 

"Talk to me and make it look serious," Vivienne commanded, arriving at Malika's side in a swirl of pale samite.

 

Malika furrowed her brow and stared across the banquet hall. "There once was a mage from Tevinter," she said. "Who could fuck from noon to Midwinter. The ladies all sighed, he gave quite a ride--"

 

"Here in the city?" Vivienne cried. "Oh, Marquis Descouteaux, I'm so sorry, I didn't see you there."

 

The man who had appeared at Vivienne's elbow was probably frowning, behind his mask. "I'm afraid it is imperative that I--"

 

"The safety of the Divine must be at all times my chief concern," Malika interrupted. She scowled. She crossed her arms. She tilted her wrist so the gold inlay on her prosthetic caught the light.

 

He took a half step back. "The safety...?"

 

"I'm sure it's nothing, my dear, if you'll just give us a moment," Vivienne said, and turned back towards Malika. "You were saying, Inquisitor?"

 

"I love it when you call me Inquisitor," Malika said, watching the man scuttle away. "Makes me all tingly." Vivienne raised an eyebrow. "What? So I'm a cheap date."

 

"I'd never judge you, dear. Especially if something terrible happened to Descouteaux on his way home."

 

Malika perked up. "Do you think he's involved with--" A noblewoman drifted close to their alcove. "--the, ah, illicit egg trade?"

 

"Worse," Vivienne said. The woman drifted away again. "He chews with his mouth open."

 

"You're so strong, Most Holy," Malika said. 

 

"I know." She sighed. "Back into the fray." She took a step and paused, half turning, the lanterns picking out her profile in warm gold. "If you don't mind--"

 

"'But his staff was more of a splinter,'" Malika said.

 

*

  
Malika came through the halls of the Winter Palace like a dreadnought, and was viciously pleased at the speed courtier and Sister and guard alike jumped out of her way. Everyone was awake _now_ , everyone was darting around like halla with ginger up their arses _after_ the assassin had been caught and dealt with--

 

She shoved the door to Vivienne's rooms open.

 

"Shut that." Vivienne's voice came, immediate and irritable. "This is called the Winter Palace for a reason."

 

Malika nudged the door shut with her heel and waited. Vivienne did not look up from her meal. "Yes?"

 

Malika crossed the room and brought her metal fist crashing down on a stack of papers sitting by the bread basket. From Vivienne's distinctly unimpressed _hmph_ , she'd used that stunt a time too often lately.

  
"Why didn't I hear about this?" Malika demanded.

  
"About lunch? I had assumed you knew by now."

  
"About someone trying to stab you in your bath," Malika snarled.

  
"I took care of it, my dear." Vivienne delicately pinched off a square of flatbread and chased down an olive with it. "Have you tried these? Dorian sent them. Refuses to tell me who farms them."

  
"You could have been killed," Malika said. Vivienne looked up, finally, apparently realizing Malika was not going to let this go.

  
"My dear, you are in danger of taking yourself seriously," she said. 

  
"You were almost--"

  
"Killed. So you've said." Vivienne pushed back her chair and stood. "Your conversation grows repetitive."

  
She threw her hands up in the air. "I beg your most gracious pardon, Divine Victoria! I had no idea you found your safety so fucking tedious."

 

"You would do well to beg my pardon," Vivienne said sharply, and the pale light of magic washed across her eyes. The table, the plates, the flatbreads, the papers, all vanished beneath a thick skin of ice. Malika refused to step back. "Charging through my palace, interrupting my meal, _shouting_ at me as if I can't defend myself from some half-starved apostate with a fish knife?"

 

"You're bleeding," Malika said, and jerked her chin towards the stain spreading across Vivienne's shoulder.

 

"That is my concern, Inquisitor," Vivienne said. "Now get out. Oh, and Inquisitor--"

 

Malika stopped, hand on the door, and didn't turn.

 

"Do send someone to pick up the body."

 

*

 

"Stand next to me and look as Carta as possible."

 

"In purple lace?"

 

"Do I misspeak _often_?"

 

"For a--what did you call it? consummate politician?--you can be as subtle as a brick."

 

"The Chantry is many things to many people. Occasionally, it is even a brick. Now hush and try to look frightening."

 

"I miss spa day."

 

"Don't we all."

 

*

The Satinalia celebrations were still going on when Malika returned to the palace. Malika had forgotten the holiday entirely until her small party ran into revelers camped around the city.

 

"So much for avoiding attention," one of her scouts groused.

 

Malika grunted. "Saves us some time, anyway." She set her heels against the flanks of her horse, or as much skin as Duchesse Poney was willing to politely pretend was flank. "Straight down the boulevard, then. If we can't be subtle, let's be impressive."

 

In the yard before the stables Malika dismounted, and only pride kept her from landing on her face. Destriers and dwarves--the jokes wrote themselves. At least the last time she felt like she was going to shake into pieces there'd been a hole in reality through her left hand. Everything ached.

 

Malika tossed her reins to a waiting groom and raised her voice to address her companions. "Every one of you did well and every one of you must be sick of my voice by now," she said. "I'm done with you bunch of nugfuckers for the length of the holiday--find your own beds if you want to, or someone else's if it's dark enough." There was feeble laughter at the feeble joke. She continued, "If for some suicidal reason you decide you need me before the week's out, I'll be with the Divine--"

 

"I bet you will," someone muttered in the shadows of the courtyard. Someone with an unfamiliar voice and no idea how well even surface dwarves saw in the dark. _I just want some ale and a long sleep, is that too much to ask?_ Malika thought, before she strode across the dusty yard and dragged a stammering servant girl into the light of the lanterns.

 

"Something to say?" Malika said. A human, tall and pinched and just now hunched over very awkwardly, Malika's fist twisted in the neck of her dress. She tried to stand and Malika gave her a little shake. "Hi there. Herald of Andraste. You might have heard of me. You have an opinion you'd like me to pass along? --Listen," her voice dropped. "We aren't very tall so we make up for it by being strong as carthorses. You aren't going to pull away from me, all you're going to do is strangle yourself. Now that doesn't bother me, but I feel like it might bother you. There's a girl. Now, again: did you have something to say?"

  
"No, my lady, no, I was only joking--"

  
"Tell me the joke," Malika said. "I've had a long ride. I could use a laugh."

  
The girl stammered and twisted and twined her hands together. Malika could feel her knees throbbing, and with regret, decided to cut this amateur theatre short.

  
"Enough," she said. "Quiet. Watch your mouth or one day you'll choke on your own teeth, Sister Hysterical. Meditate on that this holy day." She let go and the girl ran off like her shoes were on fire.

  
"Yes?" she growled at the members of her party who'd stopped to gawk. They scattered like chickens, and another kind of weariness joined the fray. New recruits. People who'd never been to Skyhold, never seen her dragged half-dressed out of taverns, people half hoping she was the mythical creature who'd suck the marrow from their bones. She trudged up the stairs and on towards her rooms.

  
Halfway there, she changed direction.

  
Vivienne came back to her room in the small hours of the morning and found Malika there, drinking in a chaise longue.

  
"--You did at least bathe first," Vivienne said.

  
"You could eat dinner off my tits," Malika confirmed, and toasted her with the bottle.

  
"How delightful. No luck, then." Vivienne came fully inside, and started divesting herself of hat, wimple, embroidered shoes.

  
"Just rumors. Rumors and empty campsites. There was an eluvian and a fucking traitor to set it on fire and die before he could be questioned--Raoul, I _liked_  Raoul--" Malika set the bottle down and scrubbed her hand across her eyes. "Elves are massing somewhere. We still don't know where. We still don't know how he's supplying them, or if he even _is_ , for all we know he's stuffing them with cotton wool and acting out scenes from Hard in fucking Hightown--"

 

Vivienne crossed back into her line of sight, dressed only in a loose red undershirt and matching trousers. "Only"--still embroidered in gold, still softer than eiderdown. "Nothing new, then." She sat down in the chair by the chaise.

 

"I also half strangled some kid who implied we're fucking."

  
"You too? In addition to the College of Magi, the Ambassadors of Antiva and Fereldan, and the Head of the brand new Seeker Order?" Vivienne stretched. Malika watched, as always, fascinated by every twitch and tell and tiny intimacy that betrayed the Divine Victoria as only flesh. The cut on her shoulder from that long-ago assassination attempt had healed to a thin, dark rope. Malika had stopped hiding her glances years ago. "Where do they suppose I find the time?"

  
"Maker knows," Malika said, and was rewarded for this bit of possible piety with a quirk of her mouth.

  
"All of this could have waited until the morning, my dear."

  
"You have the best baths."

  
"I had better," Vivienne said. "And?"

  
"Couldn't sleep," Malika said, though she hadn't tried.

  
Vivienne turned in her armchair to look at her full on, and now it was Malika's turn to glance away, settle back into her cushions.

  
"So you thought you'd share the misery?"

  
"Nah," Malika said. She put her arm behind her head. "I reckon I'll manage now. You're a very relaxing person, Viv."

  
Silence dropped like an avalanche.

  
"I'm not sure I have ever been so insulted in my life," Vivienne said, eventually.

  
"Really," Malika said. She glanced at Vivienne sidelong. She was lounging, of course, loose-limbed liquid graceful. Vivienne could make herself comfortable (and then indispensable, and then in charge) stretched on a rack. Tiredness gave her tongue hinges on both ends. "What's a 'darling' but an Orlesian 'step lively, cabbage-fucker'? You call it the Game, we call it... a lovely mine you have here, what a shame if the entrance caved in."

  
"Now I _am_ sure," Vivienne said. "Get out of my rooms, you mad dwarf, before I send for my guards."

  
Malika sighed. "I've heard they're a bunch of arseholes. I guess I better go."

  
"They have their charms," Vivienne said dryly, and Malika went back to her rooms--not happy, not satisfied, but with the sense that something in this whole fucked up world was as it should be.

 

*

 

As it happened, Malika did eventually get a chance to save Vivienne's life. Or that's how she intended to tell the story, forever and ever, let the balance be restored and the world given eternal life and also Malika Cadash, small time kneebreaker turned Herald, saved the Divine's life.

 

"Stay down," Vivienne hissed at her, behind an upended table and glowing shield, both.

 

"I'm always down," Malika said. She squinted. The arrows passing overhead were blurring as much with blood loss as with speed now. What a life, that she knew that from experience. "I'm a--"

 

"Stay down and do not _talk_ ," Vivienne said, and contradicted herself immediately. "What were you _thinking_ \--of course that presupposes you _do_ think, and I have seen _such little evidence_ \--"

 

"Even now you're awful, Viv," Malika said, in a tone both wetly gasping and stupidly adoring, before she passed out.

 

She woke up some uncountable time later. Her shoulder hurt, but more like she'd taken a hard fall off Duchesse Poney III than an almost certainly poisoned crossbow bolt. There was still damage, and she lay there, trying to decide what that might mean. Through half open eyes she could tell she was in the healer's wing of the palace, in one of the closet-sized private rooms.

 

Her thoughts were moving at a trickle. That itself was a fact to consider. Her mouth didn't taste of drugs--this stupidity was probably blood loss. She hadn't been entirely healed. Did that mean there wasn't enough magic to go around, or that she'd been too close to death? After several minutes consideration, she added an option: both?

 

The door opened. Malika shut her eyes to slits.

 

"You're awake."

 

"I'm not," Malika said.

 

She heard Vivienne telling her guards to stay outside, and then she was coming into the room. She had to duck a little to get her giant stupid hat through the door, which made Malika want to laugh, which would definitely end badly.

 

"Qun or Solas?" she said, instead. 

 

Vivienne came to stand over her, which was nice of her. It had been one of Malika's favorite views for years, second only to the rare times she got to look down at her. She ignored Malika's question, though, choosing instead to peel back the bandage on her shoulder and--Malika guessed, unable to see past her sweeping sleeve--prod at it with knives and hot irons.

 

"Forgive me," Vivienne said, and the pain abated, her fingers turning icy and soothing for a moment before she pulled back. She pulled a chair up to Malika's bedside.

 

"Qun or Solas?" A thought came, slow and thick through her aching head, and she wanted to curse at herself. "And who's guarding you? I saw Sister Evelyn fall--"

 

"The Chargers were in the area," Vivienne said.

 

"So it was the Qun."

 

"So we believe," she said. "The Iron Bull didn't get here quite fast enough to warn us."

 

"Do you think he would have?"

 

"My dear," Vivienne said. "That thought is unworthy of you."

 

Malika just looked at her, vaguely glad to be at leisure to do so, even if Vivienne was having mad thoughts about her safety again. "He would have been the first to tell me to ask."

 

"Regardless," Vivienne said. "He will be ensuring my safety until such a time as--"

 

"Viv?" Malika said, when she didn't continue.

 

"You must never," Vivienne said. "Do something like that. Ever again."

 

"Do you have a fever?"

 

"I have never found you funny."

 

"Everyone finds me funny," Malika said. "I'm your guard. Do you not get that?"

 

"You are my guard so you may use the resources of the chantry to ferret out that filthy, murderous apostate," Vivienne snapped. "You are my guard _in name only_!"

 

"Hmm," Malika said, and looked away. She thought about that awhile. In possession of all her facilities, she had a feeling that would make her angry, but she wasn't, so she ignored it as stupid. "No. Can I have some water?"

 

"I have met few people who have made me as angry as you and survived the experience."

 

"Water?"

 

There was a pitcher on the tiny table by her bed. Vivienne poured her a glass and, upon finding her stomach muscles unresponsive wax, slid her arm behind Malika's shoulders and pulled her up into an angle she could drink at. She did it easily. Malika drained the glass in strictly rationed sips and then let herself relax into the arm holding her up.

 

Vivienne's arm was hard as iron behind her head, and a tiny tremor ran through it, before she was lowering Malika to the pillow again, and stepping backwards.

 

"Oh, " Malika said. "I--you don't have to tend me, Vivienne."

 

"I find I do."

 

"Do you still love him?" Malika asked, and blamed bloodloss for her stupid mouth, and wondered how long that excuse would hold up.

 

Vivienne closed her eyes briefly, and opened them again. Her face was smooth. "You're sweet to worry," she said, and patted her uninjured shoulder.

 

"That's not an answer," Malika said. "You never answered me at the spa, either. You just laughed."

 

"Darling." A warning darling, a red sky darling, an Iron Lady darling.

 

"I did just get shot for you."

 

"It's been six years," Vivienne said. "And I have attained nearly everything I have ever set out to do. Do I look like such a romantic?"

 

"You said sleeping with me wouldn't benefit you in the slightest," she said, and Vivienne's brows arched. "Way back then--Madame de Fer couldn't think of a use for having the Herald of Andraste on her string? You're a liar. You didn't want me because you loved the Duke." At the look on her face, Malika added hastily, "I mean, I _like_ liars."

 

Vivienne pressed a hand to her face for a moment, let it drop again. "This is not the time."

 

"Vivienne--"

 

"I will send someone in to help you."

 

"Vivienne!"

 

"Don't shout, you have stitches."

 

"Just give me a real answer," Malika said. "And I won't ever ask again. You know where I stand, by now. I'll be standing there until Solas stuffs my body and adds it to his puppet show, or the Qun convert us all, or I choke to death on a damn olive."

 

"I _promise_ you that is not what Solas is doing--"

 

"I love you," Malika said, naked, ugly, graceless, painful, and Vivienne flinched from it, as she flinched from nothing. "Just... just tell me no, and I won't ever say it again."

 

The words laid between them like broken glass. 

 

"It's not possible," Vivienne said, and something moved in Malika's chest. Shrapnel, she'd say later. 

 

"Why isn't it possible?" she demanded. "Because you're Divine? Because I'm the Inquisitor? Because you're a mage?" Her hand fisted in the white sheets, inches away from Vivienne's careful fingers. "Because I'm a thuggish carta dwarf who can't go ten words without swearing?"

 

"Don't be ridiculous, darling, we do have footstools in Orlais," Vivienne said.

 

"Praise Andraste," Malika said. "Six years of my good influence, and now you learn what a joke is?"

 

"It's impossible because you're lying around in your own blood making dramatic pronouncements like an Antivan," Vivienne said. "And I will not be courted this way."

 

Vivienne squared her shoulders, and with same sure grace she'd fought and killed and blessed and pardoned and cast with, she covered Malika's hand with her own. Malika stared down at it like an idiot.

 

The door creaked open. Malika flipped her hand over as fast as her lagging muscles let her and wove their fingers together. Now it was Vivienne's turn to stare down at their hands, like she wasn't wholly sure what had just happened. Only for a moment, of course. Vivienne would always land on her feet.

 

"Boss!" the Iron Bull boomed, and started twisting sideways.

 

"You can't come in here," Malika yelped. "This room is the size of my left arse cheek, get out, get _out_ \--"

 

"Are they holding hands?" A voice came from outside, and a wide dark eye appeared in the small sliver of space around Iron Bull's bulk. "Is that legal?"

 

"Relax," Vivienne said. Malika continued to cling on grimly. "I'm not going anywhere," she said, and turned to harangue the Iron Bull.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [In Name Only (The Discovered Attack Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7575715) by [sunspeared](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunspeared/pseuds/sunspeared)




End file.
